Artelligence for January 9, 2018

In 2017, Heritage Auctions Sold a Record $44m in Comics: Heritage topped their previous record for the sales of comics with $44.3m, slightly above the previous year’s $42.95m. One of the drivers of those sales is Heritage’s weekly internet auctions which generate $208k a week on average for a total of $10.8m…

She Doesn’t Know Why People Applaud at Auctions: “I always think, Did they also cure cancer? Or did they just buy a painting?”

When She Bids at Auction, It’s Only Against the Best: She bid on Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932) when the Sotheby’s staff handling her bids warned her that she would not want to stay in too long. “It went for $45 million. A year later, I found out the two bidders were Paul Allen and Alice Walton!”

On Edward Hopper’s “Hodgkin’s House:” “I was really nervous about it. It was at the time certainly the most expensive thing by far I had ever bought. It belonged to David Geffen. It’s one of the things that’s skyrocketed in value. There are just so few in private hands.” …

If You’ve Got an Art Collection, Don’t Bring a Drunk First Date Home: The local news in Houston is closely following the saga of attorney Tony Buzbee who went on a post-holiday first date with Lindy Layman, who Buzbee says drank way too much. Sometime after they went to Buzbee’s home, he thought better of the decision and tried to get her into an Uber. Alcohol seems to have made Layman determined to stay with Mr. Buzbee and he claims she hid somewhere in his house. At some point, Buzbee called a second Uber and Layman became confrontational with the driver before walking back into Buzbee’s home. Buzbee says she shouted, “I’m not leaving.” And, according to court details that ABC affiliate reported, Layman decided to pour red wine on Buzbee’s art collection before hurling paintings and sculptures to the floor.

“The paintings apparently include an Andy Warhol original. According to court documents, the resulting damage cost at least $300,000.”…

Rybolovlev Wins a Skirmish Over Court Documents: Sotheby’s tried a pre-emptive move in November to stop Dimitry Rybolovlev’s lawyers from trying to drag the auction house further into his fight with Yves Bouvier, the former owner of NLC and several freeports around the world, who acted as his art advisor for several years. At issue are documents from Sotheby’s role in the sale of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi where the auction house connected the consortium of sellers to Bouvier who acted as a buyer before re-selling to Rybolovlev.

Now a judge in New York has granted use of court documents Sotheby’s produced earlier:

“It is not clear what information is contained in the cache of documents, which Sotheby’s produced in 2016 as part of legal proceedings in Monaco, Singapore and France. No one is at liberty to discuss or disclose them. But court papers refiled on 26 December by David Michael Edwards, Rybolovlev’s lawyer in London, set out how the documents are of “crucial importance” to the proposed UK action.”